If a Russian invasion comes it will be first an electronic attack before an air assault. Regardless envelopment and encirclement of cities will be involved, and as US analysts predict, tens of thousands will die. The failure comes from Russia’s claims of NATO aggression and the reality that it remains about energy policies and oligarch wealth.
It’s still likely not to happen since it’s a military build-up designed to force diplomatic concessions in what some might call soviet-style negotiating. The problem is that decision-making remains a domestic problem much like all politics being local and economic in the last instance. Macron’s diplomacy is more about his re-election, for instance. And the question remains, whether taking some territory like the Ukraine coast on the Sea of Azov might be the minimum objective.
“When people say it’s not rational for Putin to go to war, well, is it rational for him to accept a major diplomatic defeat?” asked François Heisbourg, a senior adviser for Europe at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “The logic of the situation is scary.”
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More than most Americans might realize, the crisis building with the looming Russian invasion of Ukraine is one for the history books — an event that experts in international relations and military strategists will likely study for decades as they seek to understand theories of deterrence and great power relations.
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The Ukraine confrontation has been a case study in deterrence, and its limits. It’s like the Cuban missile crisis, in reverse. The stakes are inversely proportional for the United States and Russia; Ukraine matters a lot to them, a little to us; it’s next to Russia, far from America. This imbalance of interests has led Putin to take ever-greater risks, knowing that Biden probably won’t climb all the way up the ladder of escalation with him.
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“The side that genuinely has the greatest stake will likely tolerate more risk and display more endurance,” writes former State Department and Pentagon official Carter Malkasian in a recent note on deterrence theory posted by Foreign Affairs.
Putin’s passion on the Ukraine issue has bordered on obsession, and it’s said to have concerned some of the military leaders around him. When CIA Director William J. Burns first confronted the Kremlin in early November with U.S. intelligence about Russia’s invasion planning, he’s said to have come away with a sense that Putin had two Americanesque illusions: Like George W. Bush on the eve of invading Iraq in 2003, Putin imagines that the invaders would be greeted as liberators; and like Abraham Lincoln, he sees his mission in regaining control over rebellious upstarts as a sacred responsibility.
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Macron said he believed steps can be taken to de-escalate the crisis and called on all sides to stay calm. Both Putin and Zelenskyy had told him they were committed to the principles of a 2014 peace agreement, he said, adding that this deal, known as the Minsk accords, offered a path to resolving their continuing disputes.
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Zelenskyy said he hoped a meeting of high-ranking officials on Thursday in Berlin would pave the way for a summit with the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany – the so-called Normandy format – aimed at reviving the stalled peace plan for Kyiv’s conflict with Moscow-backed separatists.
The Normandy format talks between Russia and Ukraine were brokered by France and Germany in 2015 and helped end large-scale hostilities in eastern Ukraine but the conflict has continued to simmer ever since.
Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel-Hamid, reporting from Kyiv, said Macron is “clearly pushing forward with the Normandy Format” in relation to the continuing tensions.
“This is a format whereby France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia sit at the same table to try to find some sort of political compromise,” Abdel-Hamid said. “It is one of the few formats where Ukraine and Russia sit face-to-face and can have some sort of direct talk.”
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On the diplomatic front, the German government says it wants to keep Russia guessing about potential punishments. And within Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), several senior politicians are also staunch pipeline advocates, complicating the matter for the chancellor. Then there’s the legal component — politically interfering in a regulatory decision could expose the government to court challenges and steep payouts.
The reasons are not likely to satisfy critics, nor provide a complete answer. But they do help explain why Scholz has doggedly stuck to his line, despite rising global admonitions. He even awkwardly stuck to it Monday, exposing a gap between himself and U.S. President Joe Biden during a White House appearance meant to demonstrate unity.
“We will bring an end to it,” Biden said, unequivocally stating the U.S. position on Nord Stream 2’s fate should Russia invade Ukraine.
Scholz, for his part, seemed to indicate Berlin was on the same page — but couldn't bring himself to actually say it. “You can be sure that there will be no measures where we act differently,” he said.
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Yet there are also indications that other factors may play a role in Scholz’s hesitance to spell out clear consequences, such as party politics and legal concerns.
Within the Social Democrats, there are some senior pro-pipeline politicians — notably including Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht. The party’s secretary-general, Kevin Kühnert, is also a big pipeline backer, as is Manuela Schwesig, premier of the northern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
Then there's the biggest champion of them all — former SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who has close Russia links. The world got a sharp reminder of those connections last Friday when it was announced Schröder had been nominated to the board of directors at Gazprom, the state-owned Russian energy company behind Nord Stream 2.
Economics also plays a role.
Receiving Russian gas through a direct pipeline would have a financial advantage for Germany and other Western European countries, since they wouldn't have to pay transit fees to intermediate countries like Ukraine. Berlin has said it wants to keep receiving part of its gas supplies via Ukraine in order to support the country, but critics have questioned how long such an arrangement might last.
More broadly, Scholz and Baerbock have said Germany needs Russian gas during the transition from coal and nuclear energy to renewables.
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If a grand Russian offensive is not in the offing, could they not stage a more economical attack, perhaps confining it to seizing big cities like Kyiv, Kharkov and Odessa? In practice, this would be a recipe for disaster since it would leave great tracts of Ukrainian territory unconquered, and capable of resistance, in the rear of Russian tank columns.
The only Russian advance that has military credibility would be in the far south-east of Ukraine between the Russian separatist self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and Russian-annexed Crimea. It would be possible for Russian troops to seize Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, a city with a population of 565,000 and two of Europe’s largest steel mills, which is only 15 miles from the separatist republics.
But analysts with good sources in Moscow tell me that the Russians would not do this, even if the crisis escalates dramatically. Seizing even a sliver of Ukraine would precipitate an avalanche of Western sanctions, halt the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, and drive Ukraine closer to Nato – things which are the opposite of what the Kremlin wants to get.
Looked at from Russia’s point of view, the threat of an invasion is a strong card – but only if it is never played. To play it would be to start an unwinnable war which would be political suicide for Putin and his government. Western media may suggest that he is isolated in the Kremlin, his judgement eroded by two decades in power. But this should probably be dismissed as crude propaganda. Verifiable evidence, going by previous military interventions from Chechnya in 1999 to Ukraine in 2014 and Syria in 2015, is that Putin is cautious in using force. Had he wanted to take Mariupol and a chunk of Russian-speaking south-east Ukraine, he could have done so far more easily in 2014.
Assuming that Putin has not gone mad, he will avoid an invasion but seek to use the threat of one to secure a neutral Ukraine in which the Russian enclaves will have federal status. He may not obtain anything like his maximalist demands, but this will not damage him much with Russian public opinion so long as he avoids fighting a war.
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